Music, Traditions, Culture, and Appreciation

When I was in high school, my violin teacher suggested I learn a piece by Toru Takemitsu. I’m not sure really what led him to this idea, but since I am of Japanese descent - and was, at the time, interested in learning more about my family’s culture - I thought, why not?

Although it’s arguably one of the more standard-sounding works of his violin/piano pieces, learning “Distance de Fée” was a challenge. (Perhaps at the time I was just naive and narrow-minded when it came to music. It was probably the case.) I was working with a pretty different aesthetic, a different facet of expression and representation, and feeling very far away from the more... predictable, let’s say, music that I had learned up until then. There wasn’t exactly a coherent structure - when I first heard the piece, it sounded to me more like a collection of sketches rather than one piece of music - and when learning the piece by myself without the piano, it made no sense what direction I should be moving in, where the climax of the piece was supposed to be. Not that there were no instructions - the page was littered with markings for dynamics. Perhaps because not every phrase could be shaped through intuition alone.

It’s interesting - almost because there were more instructions, I had to meet them with more creativity. There was so much meaning in each marking, so I had more to “translate,” if you will. I had to replace what was instinctive in other pieces with more calculated planning. As a result, the process of learning the piece was simultaneously very cerebral and yet entirely emotional. I had to think very carefully about what I was doing. But those thoughts had to come first from emotion or imagery - perhaps even more so than from the ink on the page - or else I would only end up mechanically trying to input ink and spit out sounds. Not convincing, not interesting. Not music.

Through learning Takemitsu, I learned the real meaning of timing. I learned what it really means to breathe and to let the music breathe. Sometimes, getting to the note is not as important as how you get there. I would wager that I’ve become, overall, a better musician for it - for having had my creativity, my sense of musicality and emotionality tested. Learning the piece also caused me to appreciate Takemitsu’s music more (which then led me to learn another one of his pieces, “Hika”), as well as sparked my interest in listening to music using traditional Japanese instruments and understanding more about Japanese aesthetics.

Music is one of the things that virtually every culture has in some shape or form, which is a pretty cool thing for mankind, if you ask me. But because there are so many different types of music, approaches to music, and conceptions about music, there is so much we can learn from moving outside our zones of familiar music and branching out into different areas. From Takemitsu, I realized that sometimes there isn’t a climax or easily plottable structure in a piece, that sometimes music sounds like water that has been scooped up from an ever-flowing river, as if one were experiencing only a mere sliver of something infinitely vast - and creating that atmosphere is something that takes both considerable thought and emotion. That the more “directionless” something may sound, the more valuable each note becomes as it passes, beautiful in its own right rather than for its role in leading us to different soundscapes.

The meaning of music to people of different cultures naturally differs. For the professional circles of Japanese nagauta shamisen players, learning music is about preserving a long tradition, like a museum for sounds - students work carefully to preserve and mimic even the precise movements of their teachers. On the other hand, those in the contemporary Finnish folk music community emphasize the importance of the creative, ever-changing, living aspect of their genre against an expectation of preserved tradition. Gambian children are immersed in a musical environment from early on and everyone can become a performer in their own right, but in our own American culture, there seems to be a pervasive idea that only those who can duke it out on American Idol are those who should become professional singers.

Because of such differences, perhaps it’s difficult - or even close to impossible - to fully understand such varied and nuanced meanings in anything but a superficial manner, as outsiders. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing to take away from learning or being exposed to music of different cultures or traditions. On the contrary, I think we can learn a lot by not only learning and listening to music from other places, but also by informing ourselves of ideas about music and the processes of music making as well. And I’m definitely not alone in this idea.

Like other occasions when we come into contact with cultures different from our own, cross-cultural collaboration in music can lead to deeper insight and creativity. It makes us see our own traditions from a different perspective, to notice things we didn’t see before because we previously took them for granted. Stepping outside of the borders can help to open up our eyes. If we learn more from each other, not only do we enrich each others’ musical lives and maybe even come to a better cultural understanding of each other, but we also eliminate so much of the need to reinvent the wheel any time we want to think of different ways to think about learning, teaching, playing, performing, and appreciating music.

Ben Fang - "Come Join the Band" 2013!

Hi, my name is Ben Fang and I am a new IfCM summer intern.

I am currently pursuing my BM in guitar performance at the Eastman School of Music, expected to graduate this coming Spring. I began my musical life on the piano and violin when I was very young, picking up the saxophone in grade school and the guitar in middle school. Initially, my training was exclusively classical, but it wasn’t long before I couldn’t help but create my own tunes. Ever since my first (and not very good) composition, creative music making has been one of my favorite activities. Many musicians, despite wanting to compose, claim to be devoid of the skill which they believe only a select few possess. I couldn’t disagree more! I think that everyone’s mind has the capacity to be create art. Often, it is not a lack of ability, but rather a lack of faith in one’s own ability that prevents us from trying new things. I would love to see this barrier torn down.

My main duties for IfCM this summer revolve around the wonderful pre-college program,Come Join the Band: Creative Music Making for Everyone. Chris Teal and Alan Murphy are teaching high school musicians the fundamentals of being a musician, band member and creative person in general. Sound like big goals to you? They are. But these kids are quick learners and Chris and Alan are amazing teachers. I am learning just as much about teaching as the students are about playing instruments! Working with the kids has been an immense pleasure. There is nothing quite like seeing the look on a student’s face when an idea clicks.

We covered a lot of ground last week. I had expected to be spending all of our time playing instruments and singing, but one day Allan had something very different planned for us. Drawing from Julia Cameron’s book,The Artist’s Way, he introduced us to a couple of exercises designed to jumpstart creativity. The first was a free-write, in which we each privately wrote whatever occurred to us in our notebooks for 15 minutes. The one rule: just keep writing. I found that by putting my thoughts on paper, one letter at a time, I was able to slow down my thought process and unscramble a mess of ideas that had been bouncing around in my brain. Whenever we write or compose, many of us are prone to creating and proofreading simultaneously. Sometimes the proofreading can get out of hand, preventing us from writing down anything at all. A daily free-write can free up one’s creative side, shutting off the inner critic for a moment.

The second exercise he presented is called “Creative Monsters and Creative Allies.” We began by each recalling a person or event that had in some way hindered our creativity, then describing how this made us feel and how we reacted. I was pleased to hear how most of the students had managed to rise above the negative influence of their experiences. The second half of the activity was to recall and describe just the opposite: a person or event that had inspired us to be more creative. Usually this came in the form of an encouraging peer or teacher. I think that by considering the things in our lives that positively or negatively impact our creativity (or anything for that matter), we can do a better job of putting ourselves in environments that foster creativity.

Today we are heading to the recording studio to record two songs that the kids have learned.  They will be playing Paramore’s “Crushcrushcrush” and Alicia Keys’ “No One.” None of them have had any recording experience so they will be learning a lot in the coming hours. I’m having a blast and I’m looking forward to hearing them perform at the end of the week!

      - Ben Fang

Towards a New Music Education

It’s essentially a truism, but the way we view and conceptualize things has a strong bearing on the way in which we approach issues surrounding them.

Through my studies in anthropology, I’ve read researchers’ accounts of cultures all over the world. These accounts tell of all sorts of customs, societal structures, and of course, conceptualizations ranging from how we define our family structure to what qualifies as music. As is often the case, coming into contact - even if only through a book - with another culture, opened up my eyes to ideas I had previously taken for granted in my own culture. My views on music were not immune to this.

This led me to pursue the question "what is music to us, anyway?" as independent work for my junior research project. Being trained almost exclusively in the classical tradition, I decided to tackle that genre in particular. Additionally, talking with musicians, non-musicians, friends, and mentors, and reading the range of comments on articles and blog posts, I realized that there are so many ideas of what “classical music” is (or should be, as the case may be) that it became clear pretty quickly that there is nothing created by humans that really has an absolute, “pure” form.

For example, there are all sorts of culturally specific connotations with the genre that are not necessarily tied to the way the music itself sounds. That it is “highbrow.” That it is elitist, esoteric, and costly, only available to those with leisure time and money, and thus an inappropriate genre to be attempting to popularize in a democratic society. That it is essentially “useless.” (I had a friend who told me that the only reason classical music would survive in the future is for use in movie soundtracks. That, of course, negates the “useless” argument, but does go against the views of those who believe music should be a stand-alone drama, not tied to any other art forms.)

Interestingly enough, these kinds of connotations were not always the norm. Earlier in the 19th century, there was no distinct division between the classical genre and more popular ones, in conceptualization by the general public or programmatic choices by performing ensembles. As the century went on, a few key players in the classical music world contributed to a change in the way the genre was perceived. Classical music came to take on that kind of pristine aura it is (in)famous for today through the process of “sacralization": Works were performed in full, with more attention paid to proper instrumentation and “authentic” reproduction; conductors of orchestras separated subscription (strictly classical) concerts from “pops” concerts; and the public understood the separation of genres accordingly. Classical music was no longer such a popular genre, in the general sense.

And this is largely the legacy that we’ve inherited, for better or worse. Some opinions I read brazenly stated that this is how things should be - that classical music’s widespread popularity has never been guaranteed, and so we shouldn’t see any sort of elitism as a liability, but rather an asset: It ensures high quality. Others almost don’t acknowledge the decline in popularity, claiming that the industry could be in better shape if only management were more sensitive to musicians’ needs. Others claimed that the public - being composed of living, breathing, feeling humans - could learn to love the music, if only they would open their ears, listen, and allow themselves to feel.

I am inclined to agree with the third opinion. Despite my deep love for music, I am not one to believe that appreciation of music is a trait we are born with, not even that of our own culture. Appreciation of certain genres is certainly an acquired trait. This is why music education is an important force for the preservation of less widely popular genres. 

“Well, why should we teach kids to appreciate or play music of a genre that no one listens to? What’s the use in that? It’s a waste of resources.” But this isn’t what music education is all about. Music education, yes, at one level, is about introducing certain kinds of music to train ears to be accustomed to them. Thereby children can learn to appreciate the art form. But maybe more than that, it’s about learning how to listen carefully - to a piece being played on the radio, or to a fellow musician. It’s about opening up your ears and understanding the meaning and emotions behind sounds. I believe this can lead to a greater enjoyment of not only music, but life through music. Music allows us to experience both rarely-felt and all-too-familiar emotions: It has the power both to rile us up and calm us down, to fill us with joy and bring us to tears. To be a little trite (but truthful, nonetheless), it feeds our souls.

But listening doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be!) limited to just enjoyment of music - being able to listen carefully for details in everyday life is a skill that I think is useful but perhaps not encouraged enough. I speak from personal experience when I say that learning music and playing with others has taught me much in how to effectively listen to others to work together towards one common goal. Listening, through music, can also bring people together in other ways. I had the opportunity last summer to interview French pianist Guillaume Vincent while he was in Kanazawa, Japan, performing with Japanese pianist Mutsuko Tajima and the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa under conductor Marc Minkowski. Despite not speaking a common language, Guillaume and Mutsuko worked together on Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos to deliver an absolutely electrifying performance. Such circumstances created an environment in which it was essential for close and careful listening. How many activities are there in the world that can be done with people who can’t communicate in the same language?

At least in my experiences, with so much of the rest of the approach to education of children being focused on teaching the ability to speak or act rather than to really listen, I believe that balancing that with a music education that teaches one to listen is incredibly valuable for raising conscientious people who are able to lead just as much as they are to follow and work within a group. And the fact that it’s fun, personally rewarding, and allows you to become a part of and make your own mark in a long cultural tradition? All the better.

Perhaps if we could repackage “music education” into something more like this, we might stand a better chance of keeping it available for public schools and the general public. Doing our part to work towards this goal, the IfCM's teaching artists expose program participants to new ways of conceptualizing, appreciating, and creating music, as well as facilitate the development of attentive listening and teamwork skills by providing hands-on experiences in music making and creative thinking. We hope to spread and expand this approach to music education as much as possible - for the betterment of all people involved.


- Kai Shibuya